The Linux Foundation: Not a Friend of Desktop Linux, the GPL, or Openness

The Linux Foundation has no respect for FOSS. Nor does it seem care about any users of Linux who aren’t connected with the enterprise. It’s been that way since the beginning. It now appears that the Foundation also has little respect for the GPL…you know, Linux’s license. Nor does it appear to be much of a believer in the notion of transparency.Many of us were hopeful when in 2007, Open Source Development Labs merged with the Free Standards Group to form the Linux Foundation, the umbrella organization that nurtures the development of Linux and other major open source projects. In my case, I expected most of the new organization’s efforts to be centered on enterprise use of Linux, since that’s where most of its use lies and where the money is being made, However, I did expect to see at least some efforts by the new foundation to support desktop Linux, on both development and marketing fronts. After all, it was the enthusiasm of the desktop base in the 1990s that brought Linux to the enterprise in the 2000s.